Bleep!BOX Released

contact@bleepboxapp.com
www.bleepboxapp.com

White Noise Audio Software Releases iPhone App bleepBOX!, an Analogue Synthesizer / Drum Machine Combo that Fits in Your Pocket

KENNETT SQUARE, PA – August 17, 2009 – The beat box just got pocket sized. bleep!BOX, an analog syth/drum machine debuted in Apple’s iPhone App Store on Saturday, August 15, 2009. bleep!BOX allows users to arrange synthesizer melodies, program drum beats and edit dozens of parameters in real time. Unlike other music apps, bleep!BOX does not limit users with fixed sample sets or pre-made loops. It does not use any samples, only tweakable, analog-style sounds.

Developer Dave Wallin, owner of White Noise Audio Software created bleep!BOX after becoming frustrated with music apps available for the iPhone. “Only two types of music apps were available: simple music toys and music makers. The simple music toys become boring fast and had limited usefulness and the music makers didn’t offer enough options to make a song interesting. bleepBOX! strikes that balance between simplicity and creative potential.”

Similar to the controls on a vintage analog synthesizer, bleep!BOX gives users creative license over waveforms, filters, effects and modulation. It features 50+ parameters and can play up to 10 instruments simultaneously.

“There are a lot of musicians who don’t like using already-made loops,” said Wallin. With bleep!BOX you can program all of your own sounds and make the melodies you want instead of using canned loops or samples. Now users can produce real music on their iPhones.”

bleepBOX!, sold solely in Apple’s app store, costs $9.99 USD and requires iTunes. Click here for the iTunes store link for bleep!BOX.

White Noise Audio Software produces innovative computer based instrument plugins. Founded in 2003, the company is best known for 3 products: Additive, an additive synthesizer, Doppelmangler, a spectral resynthesizer and Zero Vector, a virtual analog synthesizer. bleep!BOX is the company’s first iPhone app. Dave Wallin is the founder and sole proprietor of White Noise Audio Software. www.whitenoiseaudio.com

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Next Project..

Now that bleep!BOX has been submitted to the app store, I've been relaxing a bit and thinking about my next project. Some of my old plugin users have asked when Doppelmangler or Zero Vector will see an update. Honestly, I haven't touched those plugins for years and some of the code is pretty bad or difficult to maintain (esp. in Doppelmangler's case). Those plugins were compiled for vst 2.3 and we're up to 64-bit and vst 3.0 at this point, so some updates definately are in order. With Doppelmangler, I've always wanted to do a full re-write since I've never been totally satisfied with the quality of the resynthesis and the amount of CPU it consumes. I've actually been brainstorming about how to revamp it for quite a while now.

Zero Vector also presents some challenges. I would love to port all my plugins to the Mac, now that I've gotten comfortable with XCode. However, Zero Vector contains massive amounts of SSE assembly code and I'm not sure how well that will port (maybe it will be fine.).

In general, I've developed my own audio framework for writing portable modules. This is used in Genome Studio and also in bleep!BOX. I'd like to port both those plugins into the new framework.

Finally, I do want to get back to working on Genome Studio. I've put way too much work into it to not finish it (plus I'm getting fairly close to being able to beta test it). Genome will need some more instruments built into it, and I always intended to include some variant of Zero Vector and Doppelmangler. So, maybe now is the time to update those plugins, rebuild them in my new audio framework so they are ready to include in Genome. At the same time I can produce up-to-date plugins for them.

Doppelmangler is the most interesting problem to solve, so I think I'm gonna tackle it first. ZV will be a more straightforward port (though not trivial..). The direction I want to take Doppelmangler is to focus on high quality sample manipulation rather than all the crazy spectral stuff. Warping and modulating sounds is still the focus too (just that DM2 won't use spectral resynthesis per se). It may be something that is more like specialized granular resynthesis synthesis (not wacky artsy fartsy granular ;). As always, the motto is to be able get greater control over your samples and to use them in new and creative ways. More soon - need to do some experiments. ;)

Oh, and I nearly forgot. I have a few updates planned for bleep!BOX. Those will happen first and they will mainly be centered around performance features, patch sharing, and synchronization (read: DSMI - wifi midi).

bleep!BOX video posted

Posted a video overview of bleep!BOX - check it out:

Apologies for my spastic mouse movements. ;) Gonna work on finishing up the new website today and hopefully get this bad boy submitted.. Gotta do some more testing today too just to make sure everything is good to go.

bleep!Box almost finished

My iPhone Application, bleep!BOX is almost finished. It's an electronic drum / synth box and I'm pretty pleased with how it's come out. More info and sounds are at http://www.bleepboxapp.com/

BTW, in case anyone is interested, I'm on twitter now. My personal twitter is here and bleep!BOX now has it's own twitter here. Follow me!

Just had an awesome idea

Just had a great idea for an augumented reality application. What if you were an architect and wanted to pitch some people on a building. They could wear VR goggles and see the building in the spot you intend to build it, as it would look (rendered in 3d of course). Could be really useful for selling clients on a concept. I would think that being able to picture how the building would fit in with the surrounding buildings to be very useful. They already do renderings like this - being able to walk around it and stand in front of it would be even better ;)

Future Genome Posts

All future Genome posts will now be put on http://www.genomestudio.net/ . This blog may be used for my personal interests or I may just switch everything over there.

Genome Work Log

Been quietly plugging away on the Piano roll / Parameter Automation portion of Genome. Note patterns are pretty far along - you can input notes, drag, tweak length, transpose, copy, cut, paste, etc. One nice thing is full keyboard control - something sorely lacking in a lot of big name studio software. Keyboard and mouse commands are 100% the same. Bi-manual editing is much faster than mouse only. Also, no toolbars are needed for editing notes. There is no 'eraser mode', 'selection mode' or 'note mode' - having to switch modes only slows you down. A simple grid-based cursor system is very intuitive and gives you all you need without having to juggle different editing modes.

Working on the automation half of the interface next, and I'll be looking to keep it just as simple and intuitive.

Genome Work Log

• Began working on coding new Input interfaces (such as piano rolls, drum editors, etc). These will have a more generic data type which can be re-used between interfaces. The data type has been created now - next I will write the Module (the actual note generator), and then start working on the various interfaces.
  
• I also plan on generalizing the input components so they can be swapped out (ie, the standard Keyboard can be swapped out with the Hex style interface). I may even allow people to build their own interfaces and musical scales using an xml based format. More info to come..